











LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




liiiiilili'Pii;^-:^:!!;;!!^;!;'';; 1 ;!;^^''! ;|:;;::;'' 



D000S0fl24n 









P A** 






O N O 






* 










n <*■ 



\k* +* 



^ • 



0^ 



Oo */*-^ # 'V %^**^*\^ % % '^ #, \°° % 



A DISCOURSE 

ON THE 

DANGERS THAT THREATEN THE FREE INSTITUTIONS 
OF THE UNITED STATES, 

BEING 

AN ADDRESS 

TO THE LITERARY SOCIETIES OF 

HAMPDEN SIDNEY COLLEGE, VIRGINIA, 

Read on the 22d of September, 1841, 
At the request of the Philanthropic Society of that College. 






BY 

€ {/ 
r. BEVERE.Y TU0HEH, 

A • " 

Professor of Law and the Philosophy of Government 

IN THE 

UNIVERSITY OF WILLIAM AND MARY, 

VIRGINIA. 



T\ 









RICHMOND: 

JOHN B. MARTIN & CO., PRINTERS, 

Exchange Printing-Office. 
1841. 




CORRESPONDENCE. 



Hampden Sidney College, September 23d, 1841, 
To Judge N. B. Tucker: 

Dear Sir — At a meeting held by the Philanthropic Society this morning-, 
it was unanimously 

"Resolved, That a committee be appointed to tender to Judge Tucker the 
thanks of the Association for his very able services, and request him to fur- 
nish a copy of his eloquent address for publication." 

Allow us, sir, in communicating the above resolution, to add the expression 
of our earnest hope that you will comply with the request of the Association- 
The matter it treats of is so important, and the doctrines it contains so abl) r 
enforced, that we would deem it an act of injustice to ourselves and the pub- 
lic not to deposit it in our archives, and lay it before them. 
Yours respectfully, 

J. J. DILLARD, 

J. S. JONES, \- Committee. 

A. W. McINTOSH, 



Hampden Sidney College, September 23d, 1841. 

Gentlemen — It gives me pleasure to comply with the flattering request con- 
veyed by your obliging note. If I can be at all instrumental to the awaken- 
ing of your minds and the minds of the youth of Virginia to the importance 
of the subject which 1 have ventured to touch upon, I shall be more than com- 
pensated for the time devoted to it. 

I beg you, gentlemen, to make my acknowledgements to your Society for 
the honor they have done me, and to accept for yourselves my thanks for the 
flattering terms in which you have been pleased to convey their wishes. 
I am, gentlemen, your obedient servant, 

N. B. TUCKER, 

To Messrs. Jones, Dij.lard and McIntosii, Committee, etc. 



ADDRESS. 



Gentlemen: The name of your Association naturally 
suggested to me, that in preparing to discharge the task to 
which you have been pleased to call me, it would become 
me to select some topic connected with the Happiness of 
Mankind. The field, indeed, is broad: for what diUy that 
man owes to his Maker, to the human race, to his country 
to society, or to himself, can I inculcate, without exhorting 
to that which makes for his happiness? ° 

m But, fortunately for you, gentlemen, on most of these sub- 
jects T am forestalled. On the most important amono- them, 
on the claims of Religion and the duties of Morality, you 
are daily instructed by those who address you in the name 
and by the authority of God himself. And were not this so, 
and were it not a profanation that I should take that holiest 
of names on unclean lips, I should still be restrained by the 
reminiscences connected with this spot. Who, standing 
here, would presume to touch on topics which cannot 
even be alluded to without awakening disparaging recollec- 
tions of the learned, the wise, the devout, the holy men by 
whose lips they have been here expounded— by whose lives 
they were here illustrated? Who can speak of man as he 
should, above all things, desire to be, "wise as angels, with 
he simplicity of a child»-happy in the midst of privation- 
rejoicing in tnbulation"-meek, yet bold in the cause of 
truth— humble, yet above the world, and despising it, with- 
out recalling to the minds of many here, the venerable We, 
whose praise is m the Church, whose spirit is in the bosom of 
his God? Who can speak of the happiness which attends on 
him who spends his days and nights in the blissful task of striv- 
ing to know Him, whom to know is life eternal— to whom all 
labors of love are labors of delight- who toils for improvement 
that he may improve others- who garners up the treasures 
of knowledge, that, having freely received, he may freely 
impart— learned, without pedantry-devout, without fanati- 
cism— steadfast m doctrine and duty, without bigotry or aus- 
terity-gentle, but unyielding-kind, yet indulgent to no 

J^lTX Can Speak 0f such a one > and not summon, almost 
m bodily presence, before this assembly, the form of him 



6 

whose memory must live in the hearts of grateful thousands 
so long as the voice of prayer and praise to the God he serv- 
ed, shall rise from the hallowed walls here reared and conse- 
crated by him? (a.) 

These it was my happiness to know; and if, in the recol- 
lection of such men, all human pride did not stand rebuked, 
I might add that it is my pride to remember that I enjoyed 
their friendship. 

To speak here of duties inculcated by such men, and not 
by them alone, but by others not unworthy to succeed them, 
but whom it was not my fortune to know, would indeed be 
"wasteful and ridiculous excess." 1 will only avail myself of 
eir authority in saying, that, as there is no happiness but in 
e fulfilment of duty, so the study of duty is the true and 
only proper study of that which makes for the happiness of 
man. 

Anticipated as I am on all topics which relate to our high- 
est duty and our highest happiness, what remains for me but 
to fall back upon one to v i permitted their 

vated min i - >, e owe to Govern- 

i. ent, considered as a part of man's social duty to his fel- 
ds, they did indeed inculcate. But viewed in a political 
light, as a means of promoting temporal prosperity, of uphold- 
er political institutions, and of transmitting to remote gene- 
rations the blessings inherited from our fathers, it occupied 
no place in their thoughts. Their Master had taught them 
.o be obedient to the powers ordained of Him, and to render 
uito Caesar the things that are Caesar's. This they did, re- 
sisting no authority but such as might conflict with His. All 
ther they received as lawful, neither enquiring its source, 
nor investigating the means of securing it from decay, or re- 
straining it from abuse. 

These matters they left to men of this world. With these, 
ntlemen, you are aware it has been my duty to be conver- 
nt; and of these, your selection of me to represent you on 

this occasion, leads me to suppose that you expect and wish 

me to speak. 

Gentlemen, the attention I have bestowed on studies con- 
nected with the science of Government, has impressed my 
mind alike with a sense of the blessings we owe to our very 
peculiar institutions, and a conviction of the difficulty of 
preserving them. The means of perpetuating them present 

(a.) The allusion here is to the Rev. John H. Rice, D. D., to whose labors 
the world are indebted for the establishment of the "Union Theological 
Seminary" at Hampden Sidney College. 



the most important subject of enquiry that can be placed b 
fore the mind of a citizen of Virginia, considered as such. 

Would we estimate their value, we have but to look back 
little more than half a century to sec these States escaping 
from colonial vassalage, through all the horrors of a disas°- 
trous war with the most formidable nation upon earth and 
straightway springing forward in a career of prosperity 
which has no parallel in history. Would we estimate the 
danger that threatens them, we have but to look around us 
and within us. To what quarter of the political horizon can 
we turn our eyes that portents "prodigious, unexampled un- 
explained," do not present themselves? On what page of our 
history, for the last twenty years, can the eye of the patriot 
rest with complacency? Who can fail to perceive that cause* 
of destruction are at work— that the seeds of death are o-er- 
mmatmg? What are they? What is their nature? How 
planted? How nurtured? How shall we arrest their growth ' 
How shall we eradicate them? 

Gentlemen, the answer to these questions is to be obtain- 
ed, in part, like the answer to other enquiries of more impor- 
tance. Would you know whether you are under the law of 
God or under the law of sin, whether subjects of His King- 
dom, or subjects of the Powers of Darkness— behold ' "The 
Kingdom of God is within you." You must look into your 
own hearts. There, too, we must first look to know whether 
we are fated to continue in the enjoyment of Constitutional 
Liberty, or to give the world a n .nee of those who be 

ino-free, yield themselves up to the dominion of passions 
which load them with fetters, and hand them over to the 
bondage of a master. 

Wise and good men have often been engaged in the at- 
tempt to devise such form of civil polity as might best secure 
the freedom and happiness of their respective countries To 
themselves and to others, they have often seemed to succeed 
i*ut what is the history of the nations of the earth but a his- 
tory 01 the failure of all these schemes? Our own expe- 

2 ^ nC + e T what f it? That of an experiment in its first trial. 
Ihat ol an infant Government, promising indeed, and hope- 
ful, but of which the destiny, like all that have gone before 
it, awaits th.3 arbitrament of Time. That the result may 
fulfil our hopes, is an object that well deserves our best exer- 
tions He is wanting in his duty to himself and his country 
wno tails to improve every opportunity of laboring in such 
a cause. 1 hat we may all act well our parts for the accom- 
plishment of this great end, I now speak, and invite you to 
hear me calmly and candidly. You are now about to enter 



8 

on the world which I must soon prepare to leave. Happy if 
youth could appropriate to itself the experience of a°-e and 
avoid the errors of those whose last hours are embittered bv 
the consciousness that their own hands have helped to sow 
the seeds of death, of the fruit of which their children must 
eat. 

In seeking an explanation of the remarkable fact that all 
the researches of political philosophy have heretofore ended 
in practical disappointment, we can hardly fail to observe 
that all theorists have proposed to themselves the same ends 
to be accomplished (with a single exception) by the same 
means. These means have been tried, and these ends have 
been seemingly accomplished; and the triumph of success- 
ful experiment has been repeatedly proclaimed. Yet in eve- 
ry instance this triumph has been followed by results which 
leave the condition of man every where a subject of wilder- 
mg perplexity to the mere theorist, and of sad and solemn re- 
flection to the political philosopher. Has the end proposed 
been undesirable? Assuredly not. Have the means been 
unwisely chosen? Who shall presume thus to judge of the 

work of men whose wisdom all ages have acknowledged? 

Yet who can believe that the means thus universally chosen, 
and which have thus universally failed, were indeed the best^ 
without renouncing forever all hope of established freedom! 
and enduring happiness for man. 

What, then, is the difficulty? Mainly this, as it appears to 
me: that while it is true, as we affirm, that "for a people to be 
free, it is sufficient that they will it," no law-giver has ever 
addressed himself to the task of preserving, in the hearts of 
the people, the same paramount love of freedom by which 
the triumphs of Freedom are always first achieved. For, 
trust me, gentlemen, in this same prevailing love of freedom 
which, in comparison with it, accounts of ease and luxury 
and splendor, and even of life itself, "but as the small dust of 
the balance,"' is its only safeguard. 

11 For a people to be free, it is sufficient that they will it? 
Yes— and it is equally true that no people can be free who do 
not, in the strongest sense of the tvord, will to be so. In 
this, as in that alone, which is of more importance than free- 
dom, the will is the master of destiny. To that strength 
of will which would "take the Kingdom of Heaven by vio- 
lence," the gates of Heaven itself spontaneously open. But 
what will? The will that does but prefer eternal happiness 
to eternal misery? or that which unhesitatingly renounces 
sin and all its alluring blandishments, and looks on death it- 
self as nothing but the dark portal that opens on the realms 



9 

of light? What will is that which wins freedom, or secures 
the prize when won? The will that decides in a matter of 
taste, the color of a garment, or the choice of an amusement? 
Can it be to such slight and frivolous acts of volition that our 
maxim means to ascribe an energy which shall burst the fet- 
ters of the tyrant, and topple down the strong-holds of his 
power? No, gentlemen. It is to be understood in a sense 
like that in which it has been said that he who vows the de- 
struction of another, regardless of his own life, holds the life 
of his enemy at his mercy. He to whom this world and all 
its joys and all its honors are but dross, in comparison with 
that holiness "without which no man shall see the Lord," is 
already holy. He who chose wisdom in preference to beau- 
ty, and strength, and wealth, and grandeur, and power, was 
already wise; and the people to whom the allurements of 
ease and luxury and splendor are without temptation, and 
death itself without terror, when encountered in the cause of 
freedom— that people is already free. 

In this sense, freedom is an affair of the will, and Go- 
vernment is a matter of choice. But that choice of freedom 
which does not prompt to the sacrifices that freedom may de- 
mand, prevails no more than the desire of wealth in the slug- 
gard, who shrinks from the toil necessary to earn his daify 
bread, or the vain wish of the voluptuary for a Heaven of his 
own imagining, where he proposes to prolong, throughout 
eternity, the sinful pleasures of this life. To such lazy pre- 
ference nothing is promised in this world, or the next. 

In this sense, freedom is not a matter of choice. The sin- 
gleness of purpose, the strength of will, on which the acqui- 
sition depends, are hardly less necessary to its preservation, 
When these have spent their force, and ambition and avarice 
and the love of pleasure and the love of display have gained 
the mastery of the heart, freedom no longer exists, except by 
sufferance. While her forms can be made instrumental to 
the purposes of tyranny, the forms may be retained ^ but the 
substance of freedom is already gone. 

The great and fundamental cause of so much disappoint- 
ment to the hopes of freedom in all ages and countries, is to 
be found here. We overlook the difference between the will 
that won the prize, and the will which does but only not re- 
ject the inheritance: between the enterprising father, who 
heaps up treasures for his son, and the spendthrift heir, who 
values but to waste them. 

Thus understood, it may be truly said that "the seat of 

2 



10 



freedom is in the mind." It is true in a political as well as 
m a moral sense. Not only may we say with the poet— 

"Stone walls do not a prison make. 
Nor iron bars a ca«"e:' J 

but it may be confidently affirmed, that where the love of 
freedom is the master feeling of the heart and the main-spring 
of action in the great body of any people, freedom is ever 
found. Where this has given place to baser passions, or to 
inglorious sloth, no form of government that the wit of man 
can devise, can tempt her to remain. 

If these thoughts be just, how vain their reliance who 
rest their hopes for the preservation of liberty on mere con- 
stitutional forms ! What power is there in forms to preserve, 
in the breasts of the people, the same love of freedom that 
first made them free? This is the living Spirit that gives to 
the mere clay covering all its glow, all its healthful action, all 
its grace, all its beauty. Let this depart, and we have before 
us but a clod of the valley— the more appalling from sym- 
metry left to decay, and hues whose brightness has faded 
forever. Trust me, gentlemen, Government is not an affair 
of mere speculative choice. It is the creature of circum- 
stances; and it is only so far as man is the author of his 
own character and of the circumstances that surround him, 
that it depends on him to decide whether he will live under 
the regulated discipline of self-government, or fall under 
subjection to the arbitrary dictates of another's will. Let 
him be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Freedom, and 
Despotism itself will truckle to it. Let him be sunk in sloth, 
enervated by luxury, devoted to pleasure, infatuated by a 
taste for splendor and display, or given up to the dominion 
of licentious passions, and all the forms of free Government 
become but the instruments by which he renders an active 
compliance with the behests of Power. The prevailing 
character of a people has been likened to the kernel of a nut, 
which the shell does but protect from external influences, 
while ready to yield at once to the expansive growth of the 
germ within It may be better likened to 'the shell-fish, 
whose soft and yielding substance gives form to the harsh 
and impracticable material that clothes him, ready to be 
thrown off as soon as he outgrows it. 

It is into our own bosoms, then, gentlemen, that we must 
first look for the auguries of our coming destiny. We must 
commune with our u wn he arts- - we must examine the springs 
of action in our own minds— we must try to institute a can- 
did comparison between ourselves and that devoted genera- 



11 

lion who poured out their blood like water in the cause of 
Freedom, and left, in the institutions handed down to us, the 
noblest monument of their virtue and wisdom. 

No test can be more acceptable than this to this self-ap- 
plauding age— an age whose standing boast it is, that "had 
we lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been 
partakers of their sins." With what eyes God beholds those 
whose self-complacency boasts itself of their superiority over 
those whom he has commanded them to honor, it is not my 
province to decide. It is only in a temporal, and, to speak 
more precisely, a political point of view, that I propose to 
consider the subject. 

We certainly know much that our fathers knew not; and 
we have corrected some of the faults that are apt to accom- 
pany plain manners and simplicity and manliness of charac- 
ter. We possess much that they wanted, and much more 
that they neither had nor coveted. But it maybe seriously 
doubted whether, in the important science of Government, 
Ave have made any advances beyond that sound practical 
wisdom which made their first acts of legislation the admira- 
tion of the world. Whether we have improved in political 
virtue, is a question susceptible of a simple and decisive test. 
This is to be found in the qualities we desiderate in our pub- 
lic servants. If we are more careful than they were to select 
for places of honor and confidence none but men distin- 
guished by probity and virtue in private life— if we, even 
more than they, cannot endure to see the honor of the Re- 
public represented, at home or abroad, by "such as have said 
to Corruption, 'thou art my Father, and to Infamy 'thou 
art my mother and my sister'"— if it has become more 
and more difficult for men stigmatized with foul and atro- 
cious crime to win the fiivor oi the people by flattery, address 
and talent— and if we are less and less disposed, in conside- 
ration of these or of past services, to overlook derelictions of 
duty, and to pardon him who would sacrifice the public weal 
to the purposes of his own ambition, then are we more wor- 
thy and more capable of the solemn and awful duty of self- 
government than they were. If the reverse of all this be 
true, we shall be driven to the opposite conclusion. Should 
this test lead to a decision against us, then there will be too 
much reason to fear that alfrecent fundamental changes in 
our institutions have been the result of those struggles be- 
tween conflicting interests in the State, which ne?er com- 
mence untd the problem of free Government lias become 
difficult, and its success precarious, and which never termi- 
nate but in the prostration of one or the other, or the subju- 



12 

Ration of all alike to arbitrary domination. If we have lost 
any thing of the simplicity and plainness of our ancient 
manners — if the objects of ambition are becoming more nu- 
merous and more alluring — if the appetite for gain is more 
eager and engrossing, we may assure ourselves that we are 
passing under the dominion of passions which will govern 
us to our destruction, and hand us over the willing slaves of 
any master who will pamper them. If these things be so, 
we cannot too soon free our minds from the pleasing delu- 
sion that the political institutions established by our fathers 
are of the number of things that must remain imperfect un- 
til they have received the" last finishing touch of excellence 
from our hands. We may reconcile this to our duty to their 
memories by the adage, "that a dwarf, on the shoulders of a 
giant, can see farther than the giant himself." But, that we 
may have the benefit of that "adage, we must be careful to 
maintain that advantageous position, lest, leaving their shoul- 
ders, we descend from the high moral elevation on which 
they stood, and, in the deplhs^of sloth and self-indulgence, 
and in the mire of profligacy and corruption, permit our- 
selves to think lightly of the wisdom and virtue that shame 
our follies and rebuke our vices. We have already changed 
much; and the spirit of innovation, far from wearying of its 
task, has but warmed itself to its work. We talk of the 
"march of mind," and the advance of society, and to this we 
would have Government accommodate itself. There is no 
fear, gentlemen, that Government will not, as it always must, 
adapt itself to the changes of society. 1 leave it to you to 
look into your own minds— to look on all that is passing 
around you— to apply the test that I have proposed, and then 
to decide for yourselves whether such change in this instance 
would be for the better or for the worse. 

But can it be that the love of freedom has lost any thing of 
its energy in the minds of a people so sensitive, so vigilant, 
so alert, so eager to mix in the affairs of Government, so ever 
ready to wrest the sceptre of authority from the very hands 
in which they themselves have placed it? What more can 
be desired when a name, a symbol, is enough to shake the 
Continent as with a moral earthquake, and to introduce 
scenes that remind the beholder, of all Romancers tell us, of 
the mustering of banners, the gathering of clans, and all the 
awful signs that forespeak the coming tempest of revolution? 

Gentlemen, when the love of liberty decays, the disease is 
far less apt to show itself in indifference to our own rights 
than in disregarding the rights of others. It is not manifest, 
ed in supineness and patience under authority, lawful or un_ 



13 

lawful; but in fierce strifes, in which the struggle for Power 
takes the name of a struggle for Liberty. Of these, indeed, 
we have enough. A name is spoken, a symbol is shown, 
and instantly 

"From winding glen, from upland brown, 
Soon pours each hardy tenant down. 
Each valley — each sequestered glen 
Musters its little horde of men, 
That met as torrents from the height 
In highland dales their streams unite, 
Still gathering, as they pour along, 
A voice more loud, a tide more strong." 

For what is all this waste of time, this waste of substance, 
and, worst of all, this waste of excitement, which, once 
spent, leaves the mind unfit for action? For what is it but to 
dance around a hickory x>ole, or to celebrate the orgies of a 
log cabin, or to rally to some symbol, no matter what, of a 
man like themselves, the idol of the moment, identified with 
no interest, pledged to no right, consecrated to no principle? 

I repeat, gentlemen, the love of freedom manifests itself 
more unequivocally in respect for the rights of others than in 
jealousy of our own rights — that mere instinct of sell-love. 
It shows itself, not in restiveness under restraint, but in a pa- 
tient, law-abiding submission to all restraints that may be ne- 
cessary to the protection of all the rights of all men, in eve- 
ry condition. In this protection is the value of freedom- 
and he who is insensible to this, no longer wears in his heart 
the image of the Deity he professes to worship. 

Is this the liberty we cultivate and cherish? oris it a liber- 
ty whose aim is to sacrifice the rights of the few to the inte- 
rests, the passions, the caprices of the many? Is it the liber- 
ty that guarantees to every man the fruit of his labor, what- 
ever that may be — or that which denies to industry, talent, 
enterprise and adventure their rich rewards, and acknow- 
ledges no right of property but that of the slothful and disso- 
lute to the subsistence he docs not earn? I am much deceiv- 
ed if among those who boast themselves the most zealous 
votaries of Freedom, there may not be found men who teach 
that all acquired rights, and especially the rights of property, 
are an outrage on the original and inherent rights of persons. 
Yet, so far as these may come in conflict, I affirm that it is 
impossible to invade the former without depriving the latter 
of all their value. 

This remark, of course, does not apply to personal free- 
dom of action and personal security. These are inapprecia- 
ble, and with these the claims of property do not interfere. — 



14 

But beyond these, liberty itself is only valuable as it permits 
the pursuit and secures the enjoyment of property. Proper- 
ty thus becomes the measure of the value of liberty, so far 
as it can be estimated by any standaid; and few would value 
it at a higher price than the immense wealth often accumula- 
ted in a single life time by men who have but been left to pur- 
sue their fortunes, each in his own way. How many Esaus 
might have been tempted to sell their birth-right for sums 
which Stephen Girard would not have missed from wealth 
accumulated in a land of strangers, where he enjoyed no 
franchises, and for which he was indebted entirely to the free 
exercise of his own personal faculties? To those who are 
accustomed to speak of liberty as an abstraction, or as a sort 
of imaginary divinity, to be rather worshipped than enjoyed, 
these ideas may savour of paradox. Yet their truth is sus- 
ceptible of the most rigid demonstration. 

If the question be asked, "what, is freedom?'* and the case 
to be supposed is that of a single insulated individual, alone 
and disconnected from all ins species, the answer is simple 
enough. It is nothing short of unqualified license to do 
whatsoever may seem good in his own eyes. But give him a 
single companion, and the case is changed. The most per- 
fect liberty to both of which both are capable, implies, of ne- 
cessity, some restraint on both. Each may presently set his 
heart on doing something which may conflict with the equal 
right of the other to do as he pleases. Which shall give 
way? Equality says "both, or neither." But one must, and 
therefore both must. Here, then, is at once a limitation on 
Freedom imposed by Equality. 

Equality having thus decreed that both must submit to 
some curtailment of liberty, it remains for Equality to draw 
the line of demarcation between them. In many supposable 
cases, it is easy to do this. But will the boundary remain 
unchangeably the same? Fortune or Convention may make 
a difference in their acquisitions; and the enjoyment of these 
makes it indispensable that some things shall be lawful to one 
and not lawful to the other. "While the deer runs at large, 
each is equally free to appropriate him. When one has 
caught it, the right of the other to meddle with it is gone. 
To decide otherwise, is to give one a property in the other's 
labor. But this surely Equality will not allow. 

At first, each pursues his prey, and kills and feasts on it. — 
As long as both are diligent and both successful, all is well. 
But to-day I am fortunate, and my companion fails from sloth, 
disease, or ill luck. I share with him on the faith of a pro- 
mise that he will remunerate me when he is more successful. 



15 

To-morrow I hunt for myself alone, while he hunts for me 
as well as himself. What has now become of the equality 
of our rights? Has it perished in the using? Has the very 
practice of the principle of equality destroyed it? 

A succession of unequal fortune may increase my advan- 
tage 'till it becomes onerous to him. But, on the principle of 
Equality, he cannot shake off the burthen. If he refuses to 
fulfil his promise to remunerate me, that refusal has relation 
back to the relief afforded him, and turns the receipt of a 
benefit into an act of robbery. It is the same as if, when our 
rights were equal, he had invaded mine, and taken from me 
by force that which he obtained by a promise he now refuses 
to perform. We must acquiesce, therefore, in this conse- 
quential inequality, or the equality with which we set out 
will prove illusory and of no value. 

By and by, this inequality advances to a point at which I 
have no need to hunt. I have something in store, and my 
companion is pledged to furnish an additional supply. I find 
time for other occupations. I build a shelter from the wea- 
ther. Am I bound to share this with him? Equality ao- a in 
denying him any right to my labor, decides this point against 
him. He must purchase it; and he agrees to pay me for the 
use of it, as a place of security and comfort, by farther sup- 
plies of food. Thus our primitive equality, acting out it* 
principles, seats me at my ease under a dry roof, while he 
through all the inclemencies of a wintry sky, is seeking food 
for both of us. & 

Now here are two aspects of equality; and he who is zeal- 
ous for it in the beginning, should be equally zealous for the 
ultimate result, which is its appropriate fruit. The excess of 
my acquired rights is the measure of what the principle of 
equality has been worth to me. To deprive me of these is 
retro-actively to deprive me of that: to admit my right to the 
tree, but deny me the fruit. Hence it follows that a respect 
for the principle of equality demands that the inequalities 
tnat grow out of it must be respected and defended. 

It is quite superfluous to speculate on the probability of 
such results as I have supposed, or the extent to which ine- 
qualities of property may be carried by the natural course of 
events. Compare the condition of J. J. Astor with that of 
thousands who began life with advantages equal to his, and 
you will have before you a much more" striking example of 
the inequalities which, in a single life, may grow out of an 
undeviatmg regard to the principle of equality. The histo- 
ry of the world is full of proof that there is no limit to them 
out tnat which necessity imposes— necessity which predomi- 



16 

nates over all conventions, general and particular. When a 
man is already bound to all that he can perform, his liabilities 
can be carried no farther. This is the only limit that bounds 
the legitimate rights that perfect liberty and perfect equality 
may, and do, in the end, give to one over the property and 
services of another. 

If the ideas I have suggested were not thus vindicated by 
the experience and the practice -of all the world, they might 
be denounced as specious sophisms. It might be deemed 
enough to answer them by repeating the very fallacies they 
are meant to expose. But all history and experience sanc- 
tion them. Did the time permit, it would not be difficult to 
show, that, in proportion as Government faithfully accom- 
plishes its proper end in the protection of all the rights of all 
men, in all conditions, just in that proportion is the advance 
toward this state of inequality more sure, more uninterrupt- 
ed, and more rapid. 

Bnt of what avail are Reason and Experience pleading for 
the rights of those whom men, calling themselves the votaries 
of Freedom, denounce as an insolent "Aristocracy of Wealth?" 

Gentlemen, I have already spoken of one source of danger 
to the cause of liberty — a source springing up in our own 
hearts. You may find another in a fatal mistake at which I 
have just hinted. I mean the mistake of exercising all our 
vigilance to guard against an impossible mischief, leaving the 
point of real danger open and unguarded. 

Where do we read in history, ancient or modern, of the 
rise of aristocracy springing up among a free people? I put 
this question to those whose reading is fresh about them, and 
whose studies make them familiar with historical facts. I 
shall not waste your time in discussing it. I will only say 
that I am not aware of any such case, and writers of the 
most extensive research declare that none such can be found. 
My aim is to show that, in reason and in the nature of the 
thing, it cannot be — and that, to dream of the possibility of 
an aristocracy of any kind springing up as a spontaneous 
shoot from institutions rooted in democracy, is to imagine an 
effect without a cause, and in opposition to all known causes. 

"I do not think," says De Tocqueville, a zealous champion 
of Democracy, "that a single people can be quoted, since hu- 
man society began to exist, which has, by its own free ivill, 
created an aristocracy within its own bosom. All the aris- 
tocracies of the middle ages were founded by military con- 
quest. The conqueror was the noble — the vanquished be- 
came the serf. Inequality was imposed by force, and, after 
being introduced into the manners of the country, it main- 



17 

tamed its own authority, and was sanctioned by legislation. 
Communities have existed which were aristocratic from their 
earliest origin, owing to circumstances anterior to that 
event, and which became more democratic in every succeed- 
ing age. Such was the destiny of the Romans, and of the 
barbarians after them. But a people having taken its ?Hse 
in Civilization and Democracy, which should establish 
inequality of conditions, until it should arrive at inviolable 
privileges and exclusive castes, would be a novelty in the 
world, and nothing intimates that America is like to furnish 
so singular an example." 

An aristocracy, gentlemen, is an order of men invested by 
law with political power, and privileges peculiar and exclu- 
sive. We have examples of this in the Senate of Rome, in 
that of Venice, and in the English Peerage. These illus- 
trate the meaning of the word which corresponds with its 
etymology. It is a power in the State, wielded by a jtrivi- 
leged class. 

What is there among us that looks like this? Every 
where in the world there are diveisities of natural and ac- 
quired endowments of strength, courage, intelligence and 
prudence, of industry, steadiness and sobriety, and these 
make differences in acquisitions, and in the estimation of 
mankind. Under any form of Government which affords 
security to all rights, these acquisitions will occasionally ac- 
cumulate in the hands of some to an amount which may 
make them objects of envy. The domestic habits of wealth 
and poverty are so essentially different, that social intercourse 
between the two will afford little pleasure to either party. So 
the wise man can take no delight in the company of the fool, 
and can afford him but little. Society thus, without the 
agency of Government, divides itself into classes; and these 
are distinguished by circumstances which may well engen- 
der contempt on the one hand — envy and hatred on the 
other. 

But this distinction does not constitute an aristocracy. It 
implies no exclusive privilege in the higher classes, no politi- 
cal authority in either wealth or wisdom — but leaves the pos- 
sessor of both to stand as a unit in the general estimate of 
the common will. He may, indeed, possess an influence 
over the political action of others; but this will only be be- 
cause the blind submit to be led by those who can see, and 
the poor are sometimes base enough to sell their voices to the 
rich. But this, so far from being the result of any conven- 
tional distinction in favor of the higher classes, does, in fact, 
proceed directly from the democratic principle which places 
3 



IS 

power in the hands of men subject to such influences, and 
disposed to court them. 

As yet, then, we have no aristocracy among us; and if any 
of the evils of aristocracy appear, they are directly traceable 
to the excess and abuse of the democratic principle. The 
great manufacturer who marches an hundred operatives to 
The polls to vote as he votes, exercises an undue share of pow- 
er. But the only change in the Constitution which can pre- 
vent this, is one which" shall deprive his followers of their 
votes. Propose this. Will they agree to it? No. Will he? 
No. Neither class will consent, and all will join to raise the 
cry of "Aristocracy" against the only corrective of that which 
they condemn as aristocratic. 

Where, then, are the causes that can give birth to an aris- 
tocracy in a country like this? No people ever voluntarily 
and knowingly gave up their liberties. They may be robbed 
of them by force; they may be cheated of them by artifice. 
Nothing is more common than an infatuated admiration of 
the powers of some one man, and an accompanying reliance 
on his wisdom and virtue, leading others to intrust him in- 
formally with the exercise of powers which he abuses to the 
permanent establishment of despotism. In every country, 
the first successful aspirant to supreme power has always 
been a favorite and flatterer of the people. He can never 
hope to put himself in condition to proclaim his contempt of 
the multitude but by first affecting the most unbounded de- 
ference to its will. But, from the nature of the thing, one 
man at a time must be the object of this delusion. We 
never become infatuated with man or woman 'till we can per- 
suade ourselves that there is none other like them. Talents 
which are common to many, dazzle nobody. Services which 
may be matched by the equal services of others, command 
but little gratitude. Wealth, shared by numbers, excites to 
rivalry in ostentation among its possessors, leaving nothing 
to purchase the mercenary favor of the poor. Flattery, 
spoken by an hundred mouths, loses the charm of flattery, 
and is soon regarded as a just but inadequate tribute to real 
merit. There is no one of the arts of the demagogue which 
the higher classes can practice successfully and on joint ac- 
count From the most prevailing of all, that of inveighing 
against aristocracy, they are debarred by the fact, that if 
there be an aristocracy, they themselves constitute it. 

But men, in truth, do never practice the arts of the dema- 
gogue for any but themselves. He who seeks to cheat the 
people, means also to cheat his associates. We hear, not un- 
frequently. from members of the higher classes, indignant 



! 



declamations against the insolence of wealth, and a profiis-'on 
of cant about the sympathy and respect due to virtuous po- 
verty. Do these favor the views of the supposed aristocracy 
as a body? Are they not rather proofs that he who utters 
them, intends his own advantage at the expense of his equals? 
Yes, gentlemen, it is not alone the generous spirit of liberty, 
but envy and jealousy, and all the base and malignant pas- 
sions of man, combining with the ambition of individuals, 
that oppose the aggrandizement of any favored class. He 
who is actuated by a purpose so sinister as the establishment 
of any power on the ruins of liberty, will not be so mag- 
nanimous as to prefer the interest of his order before his own. 
He will use all his influence and exert all his art to disparage 
the imputed insolence and ostentation and injustice and op- 
pression of his equals, in comparison with his own courtesy 
and humility and fairness and liberality. 

Are these ideas unpalatable? To many, doubtless, they 
are so— for they offend the prejudice they expose, which be- 
trays itself by its impatience of the truth. What but preju- 
dice can dispose the mind to resist conclusions drawn by 
logical inference from unquestioned fact? There is a jeal- 
ousy of this imaginary aristocracy which men hug to their 
bosoms as a faith necessary to their political salvation — 
Make them doubt the existence of the danger, and they are 
alarmed at the very subsiding of their fears. But above all 
gentlemen, the ideas I have advanced are offensive to a cer- 
tain envious and malignant spirit, that chafes at the sio-ht of 
other men's advantages, and justifies the grudge by imputing 
to them designs of which there is no proof, and a power thai 
has no existence. We hear little of these things here in Vir- 
ginia. But m those quarters from whence this clamor pro- 
ceeds, what indications can be discovered of political power 
associated with wealth? None. On the contrary, we see 
wealth operating as a sort of political disfranchisement. We 
see the artisan and mechanic preferred to public employment 
before the man ot light and learned leisure, merely because 
the latter is rich. They talk of aristocracy 'till they brino- 
themselves to believe in its existence, just as children o- r0 w 
up in a belief of ghosts and witches, without ever having- re- 
ceived one word of proof on the subject. Trust me, gentle- 
men, these superstitions are not more absurd, nor more dan- 
gerous to the healthy condition of the mind, than the belief 
in the actual or possible existence among ourselves of any 
thing like aristocracy. * 

Regard then, I beseech you, this phantom of aristocracy, 
ot which, like other phantoms, all have heard, but which no 



20 

man has seen, as the creature of a distempered imagination, 
not less unreal than the images of a sick man's dreams. To 
those who, calling away your attention from dangers of ano 
ther sort, would alarm you into a jealousy of this, I pray you 
to turn a deaf ear. They either have not thought on this 
subject, or they are incapable of thinking" wisely, or their 
thoughts are evil. Beware of them. The very materials 
for an aristocracy have no existence among us. Who are 
they that, even in the flattering judgment of self-love, have 
any claim to be so distinguished? Where is that Fabian 
race? Where is that constellation of statesmen, of warriors, 
of the wise, the brave, the eloquent, the rich — all united like 
a band of brothers for the advancement of their common 
claims? And if they be found, where is the single individu- 
al disposed to support their pretensions? 

There is, indeed, a danger in the name of aristocracy, but 
none in the thing itself. It is the wizard's word to conjure 
with. It r is the demagogue's bugbear to frighten the people 
into his toils. Beware of him — not of it. From the aspi- 
ring ambition of a single man, from his specious qualities, 
from his popularity, from sloth, and cowardice, and wanton- 
ness, and malice, and envy, and rapacity and corruption in the 
people, there may be danger. In the thoughtful wisdom of 
those who have leisure to think wisely, and no inducement to 
think wrong — in the prudent vigilance of those who have 
more to lose by convulsion or misgovernment than prince or 
people can make good— in these is your best defence. The 
demagogue knows this too, and therefore he stigmatizes these 
as "the aristocracy of talent and wealth." 

To you, young gentlemen, many of the ideas I have pre- 
sented are new and strange, and by some they will probably 
be rejected. But there are others present whose heads, like 
mine, have been touched with the frost of time, who will re- 
cognize in them but the echo of thoughts made familiar to their 
ears by a voice they shall hear no more. It was their privilege 
to receive the teachings of political truth from the lips of one, 
of whose words none ever fell to the ground — one whose 
memory imparts a hallowing interest to these scenes of his 
earthly pilgrimage. (6.) Of him, in this spot, before this as- 
sembly, even I (c.) may be permitted to speak. But of him, 
what can I say that would not be anticipated by your 
thoughts at the bare mention of a name which once struck 
on the hearts of all that heard it like the voice of a trumpet? 

(b.) Hampden Sidney College is in the heart of the Congressional Dis- 
trict so long represented by John Randolph of Roanoke. 

(c. )Vlr. It. was half-brother to the speaker. 



21 

With you, his old constituents, lie identified himself. He 
was your sword and you Ms shield, his strong tower of de- 
fence. To the last, even when smitten of God, and afflicted 
with the most awful visitation of His Providence, he stood 
among you, a thunder-stricken ruin, hallowed by the conse- 
crating flash that blasted it — a monument, like the tables of 
stone delivered to Moses, speaking the oracles of inspiration, 
burnt in by the finger of God himself. 

Could he again take his place among us — 

(0/ Lux Dardanice, O spes ct fidissima Teucrum — ) 

could that eye be unsealed, to which the future seen* d to 
stand palpable as the present, what would he h hold but the 
fulfilment of all his most fearful vaticinations? And he 
would tell us, gentlemen, that all these things have their rise 
in an universal but preposterous dread of that unreal danger, 
that phantom of an imaginary aristocracy. This it is that 
tempts men to push the principle of democracy so far, that 
it results in that worst of tyrannies — the tyranny of num- 
bers. From this, oppressed and fixed m'norit es seek refuge 
under the strong arm of Executive power, which they eager- 
ly desire to render yet stronger, that it may more securely 
protect them. This in turn becomes insufferable, and again 
we fly to the empire of numbers. Thus the two principles 
reciprocally act and re-act on each other, each pushing its 
antagonist into farther and farther extremes. At last comes 
the wild, convulsive struggle of anarchy, and straightway 
all is still in that slumber of the dead, the waveless calm of 
Despotism. 

All this, except the last scene, we have lived to witness. — 
Happy he who was not condemned to behold it, except in 
prophetic vision ! 

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well !" 

There let him sleep, where the trees of his own primoeva 
forest sigh above his grave, with nothing to mark the spot but 
one rude stone, fit emblem of him whose stern and imprac- 
ticable nature refused to be chiseled into any form but that 
impressed by the hand of God himself. 

Williamsburg, September ft, 184 L 



39 



a. 

o 



*,£. * 






• * 






.( 



«> w o ' a* 



i s 









